Could the Galaxy Note 9 be the last Note from Samsung?

After the epic Galaxy Note 7 fiasco, most critics expected Samsung to distance itself from its extremely popular series of phones. The opposite happened with Samsung coming back strong as ever with last year’s Note 8. Through the slew of Galaxy Note 9 leaks, the most recent leak is also the most unexpected.

Galaxy Note 9: Could it be the last?

According to popular Korean site The Bell, Samsung is considering scrapping the Galaxy Note brand entirely. Even more surprisingly, The Bell’s source claims Samsung has been considering this for well over a year. The reason behind this drastic move are said to be overall smartphone saturation across markets. Contributing to this is the fact that consumers hang on to their devices for longer periods of time, making it difficult to sell new releases each year. Over the past few years Samsung has practically competed with itself due to the S series and Note series sharing very similar specs aside from the additional S-Pen.

The Bell says Samsung’s final decision hinges on the Note 9’s sales numbers. If they are underwhelming, the Note series most likely will be retired. The Note has had a very rabid fan base over the years thank to the added features the S-Pen gave users. Samsung could easily create a S series variant with the S-Pen instead of dedicated a whole series of phones for it instead of shelving that little feature entirely.

What’s most unfortunate is that Samsung will base its decision on the Note 9. It completely lacks innovation, apart from Bluetooth connectivity for the S-Pen, which is more gimmicky than actually functional. It’s a far cry from what the Note Series has stood for over the years. We were looking at the Note 9 as a filler phone with big hopes for the Note 10 in 2019. Could it be the last Galaxy Note in its current form? We’ll only know more once the Note 9 hits the market and the sales figure rack up. Until then we’ll keep our fingers crossed.